Just wondering if there were any differences between the two platforms I should be aware of so I know what is and isn't a glitch?

For example, the windows version goes to the starting Cobra screen with a militaristic tone to it, while Linux does not (but sound kicks in after pressing space and background sound/music begins once at docking menus)

It's a little unclear from the above whether you're missing the music, the spinning Cobra, or both when your Linux Oolite starts up.. could you clarify a bit, please?

Seems a little odd.. I get the music and the Cobra when starting Oolite on Mint 17.

_________________Most games have some sort of paddling-pool-and-water-wings beginning to ease you in: Oolite takes the rather more Darwinian approach of heaving you straight into the ocean, often with a brick or two in your pockets for luck. ~ Disembodied

I tried to test this... music was turned off so I turned it on, exited and restarted oolite, no music at spinning cobra screen... I hit a few keys and got music for a moment but then it quit. I exited to view the latest log which had not refreshed, so I restarted with shift key. Perfect start-up music was playing as soon as I saw the cobbie... six times in a row. I tried turning the music off again then back on but I could not reproduce the effect, everything worked fine. Mint 14.

I'm a bit vague but I think there is something about moving the SDL files in oolite so as to force the game to use the SDL files within Linux. Can't remember where I saw that but it may be relevant to your issue.

I also take it from the responses that windows and linux should be identical in every way.

There are differences (sounds other than the startup music for menu actions will happen on the Linux startup screen but not on the Windows one; Shift-Q is quit game on Windows but not Linux; the places OXPs can be loaded from differ slightly) - but there shouldn't be major functionality differences.

I'm a bit vague but I think there is something about moving the SDL files in oolite so as to force the game to use the SDL files within Linux. Can't remember where I saw that but it may be relevant to your issue.

BBD

This is actually the Oolite/doc/README.TXT file that comes up the first time you run Oolite (if downloaded from oolite.org or nightly server).
It concerns renaming oolite prepackaged libraries so as to force oolite to use the system's libraries (if of course they are available).

EDIT: One more thing that could make a difference (I will shortly add it in the README.TXT) is to rename the libopenal.so.1 that resides in oolite-dep/lib folder.